After the usual yearly rituals of media speculations and anticipations, this past week Apple announced the latest version of its flagship product – iPhone. There is no denying that iPhone has been quite a phenomenon, and right now it accounts for more than 50% of all of Apple’s revenues. iPhone alone is bigger than all of Microsoft. It will continue to dominate Apple’s product strategies for a foreseeable future. And yet, all of this success and the oversize importance of iPhone seems to be making Apple ever more complacent. There is no denying that iPhone 5 is the “best iPhone yet” (as opposed to what – introducing an inferior version?), but all of the improvements and changes seem to be largely cosmetic and incremental – lager screen, thinner and lighter body, faster processor, better FaceTime video, etc. There is a good case to be made that you don’t mess with a product that is as good and successful as iPhone, and frankly I can’t imagine what more could I ask form a hand-held mobile device than what it’s at offer now. One spec that I wish Apple had bumped up is the amount of storage. iPhone 5, just like almost every other iPhone up to this point, maxes out at 64 GB. That seems to be enough for most uses, but with the introduction of HD video, it doesn’t take much to completely fill up that storage. I’ve discovered that the hard way with my 16 GB iPhone 4S. And now that I’ve become a parent, I do wish for more room to record as many videos of my newborn as possible.

Nonetheless, “not being able to imagine anything better” is something that we’ve come to associate with the other, less innovative companies, not Apple. Even though since Steve Jobs’ death Apple the company has gone from strength to strength, and has become the biggest US company *ever*, there is no denying the fact that we haven’t had not been any truly revolutionary products over the past year. There persist rumors of an upcoming Apple TV in the near future, but that too would have been a brainchild of the late wizard from Cupertino. The 7 inch iPad, if introduced, would be more of an opportunistic venture into an existing market than an introduction of the truly leading edge technology.

Another slightly troubling, to me at least, announcement this week has been the latest redesign of iPod mini. The previous generation iPod was a really cool and interesting product that was essentially a step in direction of wearable computing. I am not sure if it was a commercial success though, and the change in design may indicate that it was not, but as a concept and a possible harbinger of things to come it was a very interesting product. I think that wearable computing is the next major leap in the evolution of computing, and having a product like this one that takes you one step closer to that goal would be a great way for Apple to once again lead into the new technological direction. For all we know Apple may be working on their own version of Google Glasses, but for now they seem to be content to sit on their well-established successes. In the Jobsian vision a perfect computer is the one that you don’t even notice that it exist. We will eventually get to that point, but for now we’ll have to contend with the state-of-art technology as it exists right now.

For the end, here is a little clip from Jimmy Kimmel show, gently making fun of iPhone 5. Enjoy!